The problem of The succession
Janssen’s death on 6 June 1941 thoroughly dislocated the operation of the Bank and the Banque d’Emission, of which he was respectively gov-ernor and chairman. Although Belgian government circles in London certainly valued him as a person, they, nevertheless, had become in-creasingly critical of his policy and had taken particular exception to the stance he had taken in the question of the gold, which they regard-ed as a very grave error1. After the war, because of the courage he had shown and his old friendship with Gutt, all these errors, however, were to be treated tactfully.
The death of Janssen immediately prompted a wave of speculation about the succession, the Dutch-language newspapers in particular cir-culating the names of a series of former ministers, university profes-sors and leading figures in banking2. All the while, busy discussions were taking place in Brussels behind the scenes. Playing a central role in the discussions was the Deputy-governor, Ingenbleek, now acting governor, whose chief concern was to prevent an outsider predisposed towards the Germans being appointed to the vacant governorship. In normal circumstances, the governor of the Bank would be appointed by the King, on the proposal of the Minister of Finance, but Ingenbleek took the view that the current circumstances of war required the new governor to be appointed by the Secretary-general of the Ministry of Finance, with the approval of the military commander of the occupy-ing forces3. Secretary-general Plisnier took the same line4.
1 In this respect, see: BNB, Archives, Studiedienst, 13, dossier A 320/6: letter of 18.07.1956 from the military prosecutor Walter Ganshof-van der Meersch to Kauch.
2 See the newspaper Volk en Staat, 18.06.1941.
3 KP, Archives, fonds Leopold III, farde 243: note (de Capelle) pour le Roi, 10.06.1941.
4 BNB, Archives, SD, Ingenbleek Papers: letter of 12.06.1941 from Ingenbleek to Plis-nier. In respect of the special competences of the secretaries-general during the
For Plisnier, the obvious candidate was Ingenbleek. However, he de-clined the invitation, stating health grounds5. In turn, he proposed the French-speaking Goffin, who was from Brussels and a director of the Bank. This meant that the governorship would again be in the hands of a French speaker, though that imbalance would be offset by the Dutch-speaking Van Nieuwenhuyse, succeeding Goffin in the board of directors. This arrangement found consensus within the Bank and ulti-mately Plisnier, too, gave it his blessing. Galopin found it an acceptable proposal, having no liking for the idea of a Dutch-speaking governor and even less for a banker drawn from the competition6.
Von Becker and Hofrichter felt that Ingenbleek was the proper can-didate for the governorship. Should he decline, however, the Military Government’s choice would fall on the recently appointed director, Berger, above Goffin7. Ingenbleek vigorously opposed that choice, ar-guing that Berger’s appointment would leave a bad impression among leading circles of the country and that his earlier appointment as di-rector, against the candidate of the Bank and the entire financial and industrial world, had been forced on the Bank by the occupier. Now to appoint him as governor would be unacceptable and be regarded as a
‘coup de force’ on the part of the occupying authority. With that, the Germans dropped their candidacy of Berger and accepted Ingenbleek’s suggestions.
On 16 July 1941, by order of Secretary-general Plisnier, and with the approval of General von Falkenhausen, Goffin was appointed gover-nor8. The general meeting of 23 August appointed Van Nieuwenhuyse as director9 and, on 25 August, Basyn as secretary10. Finally, on 3
Septem-war, see also: SOMA, Archives, CRE, 7 B5: Commission d’enquête des secrétaires généraux (Commission Tschoffen), rapport Plisnier, dossier 44, p. 60 ff. See also:
ARA, fonds ministerie van Financiën, Secretariat-general, 1940-1945, dossier 725:
letter of 17.12.1945 from Plisnier to J. Duquesne de la Vinelle, chairman of the BEB Commission of Enquiry.
5 BNB, Archives, SD, Ingenbleek Papers: letter of 12.06.1941 from Ingenbleek to Plis-nier.
6 See the newspaper Le nouveau journal, 19.06.1941.
7 KP, Archives, fonds Leopold III, farde 243: note (de Capelle) pour le Roi, 10.06.1941.
See also: Nefors, Industriële collaboratie in België, pp. 112-113.
8 BNB, Archives, RR, 23.07.1941.
9 BNB, Archives, AV, 25.08.1941.
10 BNB, Archives, SD, Basyn Papers, s. f. 6: note de Basyn relative à sa nomination de secrétaire de la BNB, 01.09.1941.
ber during an extraordinary general meeting of the Banque d’Emission, Goffin was chosen as that institution’s chairman, Van Nieuwenhuyse being appointed as managing-director to replace him, and Basyn as secretary11. This settled the question of Janssen’s succession.
a new adminisTraTion
Following his return to Brussels in July 1940, Janssen had taken vir-tually sole control of both the Bank and the Banque d’Emission, the other leaders having practically no part of any significance to play, but Janssen’s death brought a total turnaround in the way the Bank was led. Goffin, the new governor was the very opposite of his predeces-sor, eschewing leadership and decision-making, and feeling secure in a resolution only if it had been reached collectively by the board of direc-tors12. In addition, Goffin accepted as a matter of course the tutelage of Galopin, who, via the board of directors of the Banque d’Emission, now clearly asserted his dominating influence13. Ingenbleek, who, as acting governor, had come more to the fore during the interregnum, now opt-ed to act chiefly behind the scenes as an éminence grise14.
From Janssen, Berger had inherited the portfolio of foreign relations.
This heavy responsibility reinforced his authority and made him a key player in the management of the Bank and the Banque d’Emission. Van Nieuwenhuyse initially kept himself in the background, but after a brief period of settling in to his task, he became more active in matters of general management and even took the lead in the hard position adopt-ed against the excessive demands of the occupier.
Kauch became Goffin’s private secretary, but only in respect of the Bank, not the Banque d’Emission15. Whether this was a sign of distrust
11 BNB, Archives, AV BEB, 03.09.1941.
12 BNB, Archives, London Archives, dossier 9.1 /25, s. f. 1: documents du Haut Com-missariat à la sécurité de l’Etat, Banque Nationale de Belgique.
13 SOMA, Archives, Prack Papers, dossier JP 965: Vier Jahre Besatzungszeit in Belgien.
Persönliche Erinnerungen von Herbert Prack, p. 18.
14 Belgian State Security in London described Ingenbleek as follows: ‘Appartient à la catégorie de ceux qui depuis 1940 se sont cantonnés dans une attitude prudente et expectative. Anglophobe.’ (BNB, Archives, London Archives, dossier 9.1 /25, s. f.
1: documents du Haut Commissariat à la sécurité de l’Etat, Banque Nationale de Belgique).
15 Krijgsauditoraat, dossier CI 47/44, ‘BEB’, 3, farde 4: 64 dépositions entre le 15 décem-bre 1944 et le 28 novemdécem-bre 1945 (n° 25: Kauch).
on the part of the bankers and industrialists or of Goffin himself is difficult to say, but the argument could be made for both possibilities.
On the one hand, the bankers and industrialists on the board of direc-tors of the Banque d’Emission considered Kauch as a Bank man who was not really behind them16; on the other, Goffin and the members of the Bank’s board of directors felt that Janssen had placed too implicit a trust in a person that did not entirely merit it17. Whatever the truth of the matter, Kauch’s influence on the management and his impact on the policy of the Bank and the Banque d’Emission clearly waned after Janssen’s death18. This contrasted with the substantial rise in the pres-tige and authority of Cracco, head of the Foreign Department19, whose impressive memoranda on the development of clearing and its mon-etary implications served as a guideline for the management.
Janssen’s death also brought considerable changes in the power and management structures of the Bank and the Banque d’Emission.
The banker-founders of the Banque d’Emission now abandoned their policy of standing aloof and took control of the institution, as well as of the Bank. Henceforth, they – Galopin, M.-L. Gérard, A.-E. Janssen, de Munck, Collin and Paul de Launoit – regularly convened separate meetings with the directors of the Bank and managing directors of the Banque d’Emission, where they set out the guidelines for policy that were later submitted for discussion and approval by the supervi-sory council of the Bank and the full board of directors of the Banque d’Emission, on which body the German commissioner von Becker and Secretary-general Plisnier also sat. The strong man in the new power structure was Galopin, while Goffin, in spite of being respectively gov-ernor and chairman, clearly played second fiddle20.
16 BNB, Archives, SD, Malaise Papers: Kauch, La Banque Nationale (unpublished text).
17 Baudewyns Family Archives: letter of 16.06.1941 from Baudewyns (London) to his son (Oxford).
18 BNB, Archives, London Archives, dossier 34: letter of 21.08.1941 from Ansiaux (New York) to Baudewyns (London); BNB, Archives, Studiedienst, 13, dossier A 320/12:
note de Kauch du 15 mai 1942, relative aux documents demandés par Ansiaux.
19 Baudewyns Family Archives: letter of 16.06.1941 from Baudewyns (London) to his son (Oxford).
20 SOMA, Archives, Prack Papers, dossier JP 965: Vier Jahre Besatzungszeit in Belgien.
Persönliche Erinnerungen von Herbert Prack, pp. 18-19. See also: BNB, Archives, SD, 12, dossier 8.11/1, s. f. 5, ‘période de guerre’: note de couverture, 04.12.1941 (la Banque Nationale…sa soumission aux banques privées est lamentable).
Cooperation between the Banque d’Emission and the Ministry of Finance languished and the focus of attention diverged. Plisnier felt less concern about the policy of resuming work, as his main concern was to reduce the costs of occupation, even if that meant getting them shifted to the area of clearing. The priorities of Galopin and the Banque d’Emission were precisely the opposite, being increasingly to limit pay-ments via the clearing system to the settlement of solely bona fide com-mercial transactions and to get all payments of a political nature and of a more doubtful commercial character transferred to occupation costs.
The mutual understanding and solidarity between the Ministry of Fi-nance and the Banque d’Emission, therefore, began to show cracks that would ultimately become a dramatic rift between what were two of the country’s key bodies21.
The change was no less fundamental at a second level. Among the secretaries-general Plisnier lost influence to his colleague Leemans, Secretary-general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs22. As soon as the administrative organization of the country began to operate more or less reasonably again, the Military Government evinced greater interest in the economy, looking to integrate Belgian industry as fully as pos-sible into the German war effort. Leemans had successfully organized the German system of the Warenstellen and their Gruppen in Belgium:
it made him very much ‘their man’ in the eyes of the Military Govern-ment.
The new organizations that came into being under the aegis of the Warenstellen-system began to share out the industrial orders for Ger-many among Belgian companies, at the same time providing them with the necessary raw materials. Initially, Galopin and his colleagues viewed this new, Germany-oriented industrial dirigisme with great sus-picion, but gradually came to realize that they could hardly disregard it if they were to achieve their own economic agenda. They also saw that here was a means of shifting responsibility for possible economic col-laboration by ‘individual’ companies’ onto impersonal organizations within the system of the Warenstellen. Maybe this was an answer to why, even though initially shunned, Leemans eventually became less distrusted by the Brussels financial establishment?
21 See Chapters 18-19.
22 Nefors, Industriële collaboratie in België, pp. 57-59.
The increasing influence exercised by the founder-bankers on Banque d’Emission and Bank policy created a sense of unease – sus picion, even – among the members of the board of directors and supervisory council, respectively, who did not belong to the closed circle of the founders-bankers. One of the first to ask the pertinent questions that were in the minds of many of his colleagues was Maurice Frère, Chairman of the Banking Commission since 1938 and – on Janssen’s proposal – appointed director at the Banque d’Emission at the end of 1940. Although the Bankaufsichtamt had assumed many of the Bank-ing Commission’s tasks, Frère had been able to maintain his authority in the financial world, thanks to his strong personality and, in part, to his contact with his friend Prack, who fed him vital inside information.
During a meeting of the board of directors of the Banque d’Emission on 20 August 1941, Frère raised certain important questions about the responsibility of the directors23. Pursuant to the bye-laws, the directors were required to ‘advise’ the managing directors. In order to carry out their task properly, however, the directors had to have comprehensive and correct information. According to Frère, this was not the case, though this was a deficiency not so difficult to repair. The main prob-lem, however, lay in the limits and the content of the responsibility.
Where did the advisory task of the directors begin and where did it end? How was their responsibility to be understood? In Frère’s opinion, the responsibility was not clearly set out in the bye-laws and conse-quently more clarity was needed. Galopin and M.-L. Gérard, the two leaders of the bank’s founder-bankers, felt they had to respond to this.
Galopin himself spoke mainly about the question of responsibility, stat-ing that there was no split between board of directors and managstat-ing directors: responsibility had to be borne in a spirit of cooperation be-tween the two.
The firsT greaT disillusions
In early 1941, it was rumoured that certain government circles in Ber-lin were planning to integrate Belgium, the Netherlands and Northern France fully into the German economy by means of a customs union
23 BNB, Archives, BR BEB, 20.08.1941.